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The Fragility of Public Service: a Study of Richard II & Measure for Measure

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The Fragility of Public Service: a Study of Richard II & Measure for Measure The Fragility of Public Service: A Study of Richard II & Measure for Measure J. Patrick Dobel Professor of Public Affairs Evans School of Public Affairs Box 353055 Seattle, Washington 98195 [email protected] 206-6161-1680 The Fragility of Public Service: A Study of Richard II & Measure for Measure Shakespeare’s plays provide abiding case studies and stories that track the realities of powerful actors wrestling to achieve power, ambition and goals. I believe that the plays provide insight into the day-to-day realities of living political life. This paper will use the insights from several plays and sonnets to examine the power and limits of the ideal of public service that modern public life relies upon. I will examine the moral construction of the ideal of public service and its assumptions about human beings and the institutions. The paper will explore attributes of human beings that Shakespeare highlights in his plays and sonnets. These attributes challenge humans and institutions that try to sustain through the ideal of public service. The primary sources will be The Tragedy of Richard II and Measure for Measure. Both plays identify serious themes that pervade Shakespeare’s corpus and both are among his most taxonomic plays where characters incarnate issues and positions.i The Sonnets isolate with pellucid acumen the range of emotions and ambitions that suffuse human life. The paper will draw upon the Sonnets to help map this range of emotions that the plays illustrate in active unfolding. This paper examines how a sustainable ideal of public service depends upon the dynamics of human beings. I will assume that human nature does have substantive referents (Pinker, 2002, 2007; Damascio, 1997). I will also assume that not only science but also texts and stories can illuminate the constancy of certain attributes of human nature. In particular literature has the capacity to engrave knowledge by uniting the cognitive and emotional dimensions of comprehension (Pinker, 2007). Story telling has the ability to claim attention, engrave knowledge with cognitive and emotional power and provide a forum to expand reflection and possibilities of understanding (Boyd, 2009; Dissanayake, 1988).ii Engaging stories engage human minds at multiple levels and permit persons to learn new details and insights about life and themselves and transform their understandings of the world and possibility. Stories also augment people’s theories of mind that enable them to understand other people and actions. In a sense modern political science with agency theory possess its own model of human nature that explains more than a few pathologies of public service aspirations and institutions. I want to suggest that the model itself is far too limited, underestimates the capacity of culture and humans to sustain institutional commitments even against the postulated imperatives of self-interest (March 1989, Parsons 2005) I explore Shakespeare’s observations about the qualities of persons involved in politics and the tensions that arise between Shakespeare’s models of action and the demands that public service places upon individuals. This examination looks at the attributes of humanity that Shakespeare identifies as challenging a public service ethics. The study examines the dynamics of power and institutions that dominate politics and complicate dedication to a public service ideal. Shakespeare identifies a range of temptations and distortions of the moral ideal of public service that human nature introduces. Finally I discuss several implications of Shakespeare’s insights for the ideal of public service. I. The Ideal of Public Service The modern ideal of public service builds on two premises: first, a conception of the public and what the public is owed; second, a notion of service to focus dedication. A person enters service to a person, entity or ideal, and the service disciplines their judgment and action on behalf of those they serve. The emergence of the idea of a public merged with the tradition of the public good in the 17th century with the emergence of an engaged citizenry. This public service ideal drew on an older and deeper tradition of the common good which embodied moral aspirations, official obligations and legitimizing principles that stipulated that good rulers should act in the interests of all persons, citizens or orders of the society. As mobilized publics grew self conscious through battle and education, they demanded government recognize and embody this ideal. The moral and political ideal of public service insists that individuals put aside their local or individual identifications and interests to act on behalf of all who qualified as members of the regime. It wed the notion of service with the obligation to act with disinterest. The ideal required an internal culture of what Max Weber would call a “vocation” where people entrusted with power over others guaranteed by promise to exercise their authority to benefit all members of the public (Weber, 1947). The key lay in the persons’ moral capacity to put aside their local identifications, self-interests, prejudices and preferences in order to “serve” members of society. This provided surety that individuals internalized a moral character to perform these. Governments inculcated cultures and created accountability structures to ensure that the individuals performed well. Sustained service depends upon individuals who demonstrate consistent character and judgment over time. The virtues needed by public servants transposed those associated with good kingship or rule such as those adumbrated by Malcolm in Macbeth, “justice, Verity, Temp’rance, stableness…Perseverance, Mercy…Patience, Courage, Fortitude” (4.3.11-14). The need for these virtues has not diminished, and modern public service ideals continue to adumbrate requirements of virtue (Cooper, 1990; Frederickson, 2005). The modern society depends upon public service to accomplish a huge range of vital services with competence, reliability, frugality and fairness. These people enable functions as simple as filing and as complex as war fighting to be done day in and day out in face of the friction of normal life (Frederickson, 2005; Cox, 2009; Thompson, 1987; Cooper, 1990). The ideal of public service demands much of human beings. It requires public servants to exercise immense self-control; to make promises and live up to them; to truthfully be accountable; to master the competences and skills of their task; to exercise self-constraint and not use their office for personal or familial gain; to spend the money entrusted with them frugally; to restrain irrationality in judgment; to frame their judgments and act in light of the standards of their position. In most cases these standards would be embodied in laws, rules and regulations. Public service also depends upon institutions imbued with cultural norms, rituals, symbols that reinforce and support the values and judgment public servants deploy (March, 1987; Schein, 2004; Wilson, 1989). The ideal relies upon institutions, culture and accountability to sustain it. Shakespeare poses the question can the ideal be sustained over time. II. The Challenges of Human Nature Shakespeare’s account of human nature poses serious challenges to the ideals of public service. The ideal, itself, is now so pervasive across modern regimes that the definition of corruption highlights its lack. The standard definitions of corruptions highlight how state officials use power to extort resources in exchange for service or use of state office to augment personal or clan coffers. The corruption can extend deeper where it distorts the capacity for loyalty to principles and institutions beyond one’s own interests and desire. A. Passions and Reason Shakespeare begins innocuously enough. His Sonnets call attention to the imperious role of passion in human life. Love, the archetype of human emotion, stands as a motivator that quickly grows into madness “in pursuit and possession.” Emotions simply overwhelm limited human reason for “reason is past care” (129; 147). Emotions unleash “perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame,” and this is only love! Passions ground and inform valuations and provide strong spurs to action. Shakespeare’s ruthless Ulysses justifies himself because passion drives humans as a “universal wolf” where “power into will and will into appetite.” Without order life becomes “universal prey” (Troilus & Cressida 1.3.120-24). The passions dominate against the vain pretensions of the mind, as Portia points out in the Merchant of Venice, “The brain may devise laws for the blood, but a hot temper leaps o’er a cold decree (1.2.17-18). These passions lie within all humans as the Duke in Measure for Measure remarks, “O, what man may within him hide, though angel on the outward side (3.2.264-5). Power exacerbates passion’s dominance of the mind. The Duke wonders about the impact of his delegation of power to the meticulous Angelo, “Hence we shall if power change purpose what our seemers be”(1.3.53-4). In rebuffing Angelo’s later abuse of power Isabella points out how few understand their own passions. In Angelo’s case “Man, proud man, dress’d in a little brief authority, most ignorant of what he’s most assur’d” (2.2.118-120). Any emotion can mutate into madness. Madness in its Renaissance sense overwhelms the mind and reason. Passions dominate humans, and reason becomes subservient to passion’s ends. This means human reason seldom stands against the insistent desire of passion and often becomes a mere tool to the passionate desire for status, achievement, and glory. Passion spawns “fears to hopes and hopes to fears” and dominates human motivation as a “madding fever.” (Sonnet, 19) Politics is shot through with powerful passions. The stakes are high for everyone, and emotions ground their evaluation of the stakes. In Shakespeare’s world several passions govern political life: ambition, glory, honor, fear. His world vibrates with strong passionate actors obsessed with seizing power and advantage.
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